The present invention relates to an apparatus for removing printing material on a recording member.
Conventionally, there has been proposed, from the viewpoint of paper recycling, an apparatus for removing printing material on a recording member recorded by an electro-photographic system. In the apparatus, a heat-melting releasing member is brought into contact with the recording member and heated. Then the releasing member is cooled and separated from the recording member, thereby the printing material on the recording member is released and transferred onto the releasing member.
For example, there is disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 1-297294 (1989), an apparatus as shown in FIG. 8. The apparatus is so arranged that a plane part of a belt form releasing member 201 is brought into pressure contact with a recording member 202, and the recording member 202 is moved in a curved state around a roller 203 to make separation, thereby the printing material on the recording member 202 is released and transferred onto the releasing member 201.
However, in the above apparatus, it has been observed that the recording member 202 passes through the roller 203 as it is adhered to the releasing member 201 without being curved at a separation beginning point where the recording member 202 starts to be curved. In the case when the length of the recording member 202 extends to the length of A4 size, it has been also observed that the recording member 202 is not uniformly curved, whereby some resin of the surface layer of the releasing member 201 is transferred to the recording member 202, and the printing material on the recording member 202 is not satisfactorily released onto the releasing member 201, leading to a bad deinking result.
In order to eliminate such disadvantages, a separation claw is generally used to separate the recording member from the releasing member. Since the conventional separation claw, however, comes into contact with the releasing member, there has been a drawback that the releasing member is damaged by the separation claw, or that the printing material is adhered to the separation claw and solidified thereon, causing a difficulty of cleaning after repeated operation.
There is also disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 7-175385 (1995), an apparatus for removing printing material, in which a separation beginning line between a releasing belt and a transfer paper is angled with respect to the front end edge of the transfer paper, the transfer paper is conveyed so that the front corner of the transfer paper reaches the curvature of the releasing belt first, whereby the transfer paper is easily separated from the releasing belt.
However, the apparatus described in the above publication has a construction with the transfer paper kept in a flat condition and the releasing member curved to remove the printing material. Therefore, compared to a construction with the transfer paper curved for the separation, it is inescapable that force for the separation becomes larger. Thus, it is essentially difficult to stably remove the printing material.